The "Partner Alliance" initiative aims to ensure that everyone has the right skills and opportunities to continue to create diverse environments, prioritise sustainability in business decisions and develop responsible and ethical technologies.

Since 1990 Microsoft Portugal has been supporting the country for the challenges of the future and with the Microsoft Partner Alliance in Portugal initiative, launched today, the company calls on its more than 3,000 partners to share their vision to help the country prosper. The main goals of the initiative are listed as: sharing the same values; the Impact on Scale of the partner ecosystem in Portugal; increasing Loyalty among partners; adopting and scaling New Business Perspectives; and building and strengthening relationships.   

The project which already has 30 partners and more than 20,000 people is for Abel Aguiar, Executive Director for Channel and Partners at Microsoft Portugal, "a source of great proud that we already have this number of partners involved, which reinforces the confidence and vitality of our ecosystem. At Microsoft Portugal, we walk side by side with partners in a remarkable journey. With this Alliance, we plan, committed to ensuring that everyone has the right skills and opportunities to continue to embrace digital transformation."

The Pillars governing this initiative are in line with the strategy and values of Microsoft and its partner ecosystem:

• Digital Skills: Creating awareness for digital skills initiatives to support Portugal in preparing for the challenges of the future and taking advantage of opportunities, empowering partners with new skills and promoting initiatives with organisations

• Ethical and Responsible Artificial Intelligence: Adopting diverse perspectives, continuous learning and agile responsiveness as technology develops, putting people first. For Artificial Intelligence to be developed and implemented responsibly, partners are offered Microsoft AI design principles.

• Diversity and Inclusion: Improving the diversity of the technological workforce in Portugal and inclusion by building and implementing accessible solutions that empower all people. Adoption of inclusive recruitment and promotion processes, practices and the fight against racial inequality are some of the principles valued.

• Sustainability: Technology has the power to help protect our planet and Microsoft is supporting its partners and customers to reduce their carbon footprint in line with its global commitments - to be carbon negative by 2030, in addition to removing all the carbon it has emitted since 1975, and participation in the $10 billion Climate Innovation Fund.

In addition to ARMIS, the other 29 partners that are already part of the Alliance are: Altice Portugal, Arrow, Avanade, Axians, BI4ALL, BindTuning Bizdirect, BOLD by Devoteam, Capgemini, Claranet, DevScope, DXC Technology, everis NTT DATA, EY, Inetum, GSTEP; GTI, Hydra iT, InnoWave, myPartner, Nexllence, NextBITT, Noesis, Rumos, Shift, Syone, Tech Data, Unipartner and Xpand IT.